After many conversations with students and graduates, we realized we need a page that speaks about our training and why our students want to study with us. We hope you enjoy reading this.
— Jacqueline & Joseph Freeman
Why Students Choose Our Training
Toward the end of a recent class some of our students were telling us why they chose our school. A few mentioned they had to “read between the lines” to know that ours is the kind of training they were really looking for. When I reread our website, I noticed that we had been trying to describe the work in very professional terms and we needed to speak more directly to everything we intend to have happen at our school.
Yes, we can talk about our work in all-dressed-up language technical talk. We have, since 1998, been training folks, accurately describing the nuts and bolts of the work as Equine Structural Integration bodywork, a progressive bodywork series that significantly changes how horses feel and how they move their bodies so they get to be the best horses they are capable of being.
Horses benefit a lot from receiving the series. They improve and with very reliable regularity. The horses appreciate that. You know it and they know it and a lovely, caring bond develops. They know you helped them feel and move better and you both feel warmly fulfilled by that.
Even though that’s what happens, we rarely write about that part because frankly the emotional progression of a series and how it affects both horses AND practitioner is harder to describe than explaining how the bodywork works. We always hope people can see in our descriptions and the comments from students and graduates, enough to know if this is the kind of work that would make them truly excited about getting up in the morning.
Lucky for us a lot of good folks figured that out and came and trained with us. And here’s where we learned something from our students that’s really important:
This work helps horses a lot — and at the same time it also makes we who practice this work into better people.
It makes us more of who we’re meant to be. Good people doing heart-centered work that truly does help horses. Added benefit — we get to spend a lot of time around horses, around people who also love being with horses, and we can earn a pretty decent income doing what some graduates tell us is their real life’s work.
Yes, we teach core skills that can significantly change a horse’s structure, resolve issues of imbalance and improve movement and attitude. That’s what we normally speak about.
There’s another side to this, the feeling we get inside from doing it.
- When the mare you’ve done two session with softly nickers when she sees you walking toward her stall.
- When the horse’s owner tells you how much better her horse is going, how they can easily do things that used to be difficult.
- When you and the gelding you’re working with suddenly connect, really tune in to each other and the two of you magically become like one being working toward the same goal.
This is what we’re looking for in our students, people who want to learn to work with horses in a career that calls upon you to use your brain and your body with your heart and soul.
We’re not looking to convince anyone to become a student. That wouldn’t help us in our school’s mission one bit. Surprisingly, we’re not even looking for hundreds of students. Fact is, we haven’t yet figured out how to train more than a handful of people at a time. We keep these classes small because we like to work with every student individually — just as we do with the horses — to bring out their unique strengths and best self.
Our school costs a good amount of money. We know that. We don’t mind sharing how we figured out tuition. We base the amount on what we need to pay ourselves to have the time to work with our students this way. We also look at what our graduates do once they’re out in the field to make sure they’re profiting. That’s important to us, too. Our students continue to tell us they get a good return for their investment, that the training works. They’re pleased and productive and we’re happy about that.
That’s pretty much what we wanted to say to you.
If what we’ve said speaks to you, you are probably that one-in-a-hundred person that we’re looking for and we hope you’ll pick up the phone and call us. Or send us an email by clicking here.
Thanks for reading this. Please go through all the pages about the school and what we do, or call and ask us questions directly. We really do enjoy speaking with prospective students because our students tend to be pretty interesting people. When you’re all done reading, go on over to the practitioners page and have a look at our graduates. If you feel like you’d like to become part of that group, we’d love to help make that happen.
warmly,
Jacqueline & Joseph Freeman
Training Director & Founder of the Equine Natural Movement School
Where to next? How about reading what each class covers? Read course info by clicking here.